More than 140 clubs breached licences, with a third caught taking water illegally, analysis shows – but no fines issued
More than 140 golf clubs in England have breached their water extraction licences in the past five years, according to data analysis by the Guardian.
More than a third of these clubs were caught taking water illegally from the environment, either by taking more than permitted or by removing it outside of the permitted period.
Continue reading...Man, who had arrived in Turin from Miami via Istanbul, under investigation for smuggling and faces fine or prison
An Italian man is facing a hefty fine or possible prison term after the dried head of a critically endangered crocodile was found in his luggage at Turin’s Caselle airport.
The man had arrived at the airport in the northern Italian city on a flight from Miami via Istanbul, the Turin unit of Italy’s financial police squad said in a statement.
Continue reading...It all depends on the variety of tomato and the dish you’re making, says our panel of experts
Why do recipes often say to deseed tomatoes? Isn’t that where the flavour is, especially since the seeds don’t make much difference to a sauce’s texture?
Catriona, by email
“It all depends on the variety of tomato,” says the Guardian’s Rachel Roddy, “because some are much seedier than others. Sicilian varieties that require little watering, for example, have loads of little bitter seeds, which do need flicking or sieving out.” If, however, Catriona had some vesuvio tomatoes destined for a salad, Jay Patel, co-owner of Italian restaurant Legare in London, wouldn’t bother: “Those are generally pretty meaty and don’t have many seeds, so I’d just slice and dress them generously with olive oil and salt, and you’ll have something pretty special.” And that’s the crux of the matter: as well as the type of tomato, the answer hinges on what you’re planning to do with them, too. “If you’re making a salad with watery winter tomatoes, say, there’s a purpose for those seeds,” Patel adds, “because they provide a lovely pop as well as acidity.”
The most common deseeding scenario is for pasta sauces, but even that comes with a caveat, Patel says: “If I’m going for a slow-cooked sauce, it’s tinned chopped tomatoes, seeds and all. But if I’m after a lighter, fresher tomato sauce, I’ll quickly blanch, peel and deseed fresh tomatoes myself.” Nick Molyviatis of Zylia in London, meanwhile, scoops out the seeds with a teaspoon or he grates his tomatoes instead – “the skin acts as a protector, a glove” – while Roddy’s “best defence against seeds” is a food mill: “Seeds don’t contain flavour as such, but the fleshy gel around them does, which is why a food mill is great,” she explains. “It presses the flavour from that and the skin, while at the same time separating them from the sauce base.”
Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com
Continue reading...The directing duo behind uplifting mega-hit Intouchables return for this heartwarming coming-of-age drama, but it is the parents in the story who pull focus
Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano are the French directors who created the uplifting mega-hit Intouchables, about a wealthy quadriplegic and his carer. Now the pair bring their brand of squishy heartwarming charm to the 1980s, with this nostalgic movie about a 13-year-old boy growing up in the Paris suburbs. It’s funny and sweet but I couldn’t help feeling the film-makers missed a trick; their coming-of-age plot is all very well, but Louis Garrel and Call My Agent! star Camille Cottin give such funny and charismatic performances as the boy’s bickering parents, a portrait of their marriage in crisis would have been 10 times more entertaining.
The film opens with Vincent (Simon Boublil) preparing for his barmitzvah against a fractious atmosphere at home. The country is gripped by recession and money is tight. His dad, Yves (Garrel) was laid off months ago, but every morning puts on a suit and pretends to go out to work; Garrel is terrific, likable but fundamentally unreliable. Vincent’s mum is a go-getting secretary, who can see that the future is technology and signs up for an IT course. At school, Vincent has a massive crush on a girl who cannot remember his name, or chooses not to – she calls him “Thingummy”.
Continue reading...A natural history museum lets residents take home 1,400 specimens, from bobcats and beetles to snakes in jars
On a hot afternoon in August, I walked out of the San Diego Natural History Museum carrying a whale rib, a leopard pelt, a taxidermized weasel and a small piece of fossilized dinosaur poop.
It felt like a heist. These were real specimens that belonged to the museum, not gift shop replicas. But for two weeks, they were mine to take home, display in my living room, even bring to events with my friends.
Continue reading...The masterful Harrow MC behind the year’s funniest, most inventive UK rap debut explains how his parents sparked his ravenous outlook – and why he’s wrestling his peers
A few Guinnesses into an interview in his local Irish boozer, and 26-year-old Harrow rapper Kibo is cooking. We’re talking football. As a kid, he preferred playing Fifa Street – where ordinary players backflip off walls to score incomprehensible bicycle kicks – to regular realistic Fifa. “If I’m gonna play a video game, I want to do some shit I can’t do in real life,” he says. He’s drawn to similarly miraculous footballers: Balotelli, Drogba in his Chelsea days, Ronaldinho and his dad’s favourite, Eric Cantona: “Oh God, with his collar popped, looking like Kanye West?” Kibo then recites Cantona’s 2019 Uefa president’s award speech – a mash-up of King Lear and philosophical musings on war and science – to near perfection.
Magic is at the heart of Kwelengletarianism, “the idea of being in a place that’s very grey, and trying to find a prismatic iridescence in it”, that underpins Kibo’s sensational album Kwengletaria: Ragamyff. (Cantona? “He’s a Kwengletarian to the nth degree.”) During his long rise through London’s rap scene, canonised by co-signs from Skepta, JME and Dave, Kibo has become a rare MC from Harrow, the town that produced Kate Nash and Jai Paul but no rappers of note. “It’s awesome,” he says of its lack of rap tradition, “a complete blank slate” to be as imaginative as he wants. Kwengletaria finds the myth in the mundane: on the track Bakerloo Dragon, a normal tube journey becomes a cruising broken-beat roller aboard a fire-spitting Bakerloo line train. I tell him my train to Harrow was one of these flame-graffitied dragons. “But did you get any sparks?” he asks enthusiastically. “You get sparks after Stonebridge Park!”
Continue reading...Experts helped guide weather scenes in Pressure – a film depicting dramatic buildup to 1944’s D-day landings
Dressed in a Royal Air Force uniform and sporting a trim moustache, Andrew Scott looks slightly queasy – as well he might. Behind him is a huge map of the Channel, and in front of him is Brendan Fraser, looming with a request: “I need a forecast,” he says.
Starring in the film Pressure, based on a true story, Scott plays the meteorologist Capt James Stagg – the man who must tell Gen Eisenhower – played by Fraser – whether conditions will be suitable for the D-day landings scheduled to take place on 5 June 1944. But a large storm is approaching the Normandy coast.
Continue reading...
Viraal berichtje vorige week op www.geenstijl.nl over de Syrische immigrant Mohammed K van 18 jaar, die 114 politieregistraties op zijn naam heeft staan en binnenkort in Nederland wordt herenigd met zijn ouders en broertjes. Het Kamerlid G. Wilders van de Partij voor de Vrijheid heeft daarover enkele vragen aan asielminister Bart van den Brink, maar die kan vandaag toevallig niet, dus mag LinkedIn-auteur Claudia van Bruggen de honneurs waarnemen. Livestream na de breek.
UPDATE: Gedoe vanwege hysterisch gegil op de tribune
UPDATE: De staatssecretaris heeft 'begrip voor de verontwaardiging', maar kan niet ingaan, op deze casus en wijst er daarna op dat mensen die niet worden uitgezet nog steeds recht houden op gezinshereniging
HILVERSUM (ANP) - Omroepdirecteur Peter Vlemmix van Ongehoord Nederland (ON!) zal zich verzetten als mediaminister Rianne Letschert besluit om de voorlopige erkenning van de omroep in te trekken. Dat verkondigde Vlemmix in de uitzending van Ongehoord Nieuws, voorafgaand aan het gesprek dat hij dinsdagmiddag met de minister voert. In dat gesprek maakt Letschert een voorgenomen besluit bekend over het al dan niet intrekken van de voorlopige licentie.
"Ik wil nog wel zeggen dat wij ons hier uiteraard niet zomaar bij neer gaan leggen", sloot Vlemmix het gesprek in de uitzending af. Volgens de omroepdirecteur is uit Den Haag al gelekt dat de licentie van ON! waarschijnlijk wordt ingetrokken.
ON! kreeg veel kritiek op een online-uitzending waarin een toespraak van Adolf Hitler werd getoond. Het Commissariaat voor de Media en de NPO hebben zich daarna tot de minister gewend en aangegeven dat er voldoende grondslag is om de licentie in te trekken. ON! kwam de afgelopen jaren vaker in opspraak.
KYIV (ANP/RTR/AFP) - De Oekraïense president Volodymyr Zelensky hoopt dat een ontmoeting tussen Oekraïense, Russische en Amerikaanse onderhandelaars nog later deze maand kan plaatsvinden. Dat zei hij nadat de Amerikaanse gezanten Steve Witkoff en Jared Kushner afgelopen weekend een bezoek hadden gebracht aan Moskou en Kyiv.
De bezoeken leverden geen directe doorbraak op, maar Zelensky toonde zich optimistisch dat rechtstreekse gesprekken met Rusland binnenkort kunnen worden hervat. "Als alle partijen instemmen, willen we de gesprekken dit najaar voeren", zei Zelensky tegen verslaggevers. "Als het in september kan, is dat fantastisch. Hoe eerder, hoe beter."
Hij noemde Turkije, de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten en Zwitserland als mogelijke locaties, maar sloot ook andere landen niet uit. Als de gesprekken doorgaan, verwacht hij dat onder meer graantransporten en energie-infrastructuur op de agenda staan.
Eerdere bemiddelingspogingen onder Amerikaanse leiding liepen op niets uit.
REYKJAVIK (ANP/RTR) - De IJslandse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir heeft de Amerikaanse ambassadeur in IJsland Billy Long ontboden. Zij deed dit omdat president Donald Trump maandag een kaart plaatste op zijn sociale mediaplatform Truth Social. Op deze kaart waren IJsland, Groenland, Canada, Mexico, de VS en het gebied ten zuiden ervan tot en met Panama en de Caraïben bedekt door de Amerikaanse vlag.
"Er is duidelijk gemaakt dat het bericht volstrekt ongepast was", verklaarde het IJslandse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken tegen omroep RÚV.
Trump deelde de kaart uren nadat de Europese Commissie een investering van 200 miljoen euro in Groenland aankondigde. Zijn uitspraken dat Groenland Amerikaans grondgebied moet worden, hebben tot spanningen in Europa geleid.
IJsland stemde vorige maand nog tegen het heropenen van de EU-lidmaatschapsonderhandelingen. Voorstanders pleitten voor nauwere banden met de EU door zorgen omtrent de betrouwbaarheid van de VS.
